This invention relates to a family of novel transcription factors that bind to various abscisic acid responsive elements(ABREs), more particularily, factors named as ABFs(ABRE-Binding Factors) isolated by yeast one-hybrid screening of an Arabidopsis cDNA expression library using a prototypical ABRE (SEQ ID NO: 9; GGACACGTGGCG).
Abscisic acid (ABA) is one of the major plant hormones that plays an important role during plant growth and development (Leung and Giraudat, 1998). The hormone controls several physiological processes during seed development and germination. During vegetative growth, ABA is known to mediate responses to various adverse environmental conditions such as drought, high salt and cold/freezing (Shinozaki and Yamaguchi-Shinozaki, 1996).
One of the ABA-mediated responses to various environmental stresses is the induced expression of a large number of genes, whose gene products are involved in the plant's adaptation to the stresses (Ingram and Bartels, 1996). ABA responsive elements (ABREs), i.e., cis-regulatory elements that mediate the ABA-modulated gene expression, have been identified from the promoter analysis of ABA-regulated genes (reviewed in Busk and Pages, 1998). One class of the ABREs includes elements that share a PyACGTGGC (Py indicates C or T) consensus sequence, which can be considered a subset of a larger group of cis-elements known as "G-box" (Menkens et al., 1995). Another class of ABREs, known as "coupling elements (CE)" or "motif 111", shares a CGCGTG consensus sequence. Both classes of ABREs, here, referred to as G/ABRE (G-box-like ABRE) and C/ABRE (CE-like ABRE), respectively, are almost ubiquitous in the promoter regions of ABA responsive genes of both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants.
A number of basic leucine zipper (bZIP) class DNA-binding proteins are known to interact with the ABREs (Busk and Pages, 1998). EMBP1 and TAF1 have been isolated based on their in vitro binding activity to G/ABREs. GBF3, originally identified as one of the G-box binding factors (GBFs) involved in the light regulation of a ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase gene (Schindler et al., 1992), has been cloned using the ABA-responsive, G-box element of a Arabidopsis Adh1 gene. Recently, a family of embryo-specific factors has been reported that can recognize both G/ and C/ABREs (Kim and Thomas, 1998; Kim et al., 1997). Other factors binding to G-box have also been described (Foster et al., 1994).
Although ABRE-binding factors have been known for some time, several observations suggest that hitherto unidentified factors are involved in ABA-regulated gene expression during stress response, especially in vegetative tissues. ABA-induction of rice rab16A and Arabidopsis rd29B genes requires de novo protein synthesis (Nakagawa et al., 1996; Yamaguchi-Shinozaski and Shinozaki, 1994), suggesting the involvement of ABA-inducible factors. In vivo binding of ABA-inducible factors has been demonstrated in maize rab17 gene (Busk et al., 1997). In the case of rab16B gene, currently unknown, C/ABRE-binding factor(s) has been suggested to mediate ABA response through the motif III (Ono et al., 1996). Furthermore, it has been well established by genetic studies that different ABA signaling pathways operate in seeds and in vegetative tissues, respectively (Leung and Giraudat, 1998), and tissue-specific ABRE-binding activities have been demonstrated (Pla et al., 1993). None of the source materials used in the previous protein-DNA interaction clonings, however, were ABA- or stress-treated young plant tissues, and thus, inducible factors that may be critical for the ABA-mediated stress response during vegetative growth phase may have been missed so far.
Numerous stress responsive genes involved in plant's adaptation to various environmental stresses are regulated by ABA through G/ABREs or C/ABREs (Ingram and Bartels, 1996). Therefore, overexpression of ABRE-binding transcription factors will result in the activation of these stress-inducible genes and thus enhanced stress tolerance. Hence, once isolated, the ABRE-binding factors will be suitable for the generation of transgenic plants that are tolerant to multiple environmental stresses. Feasibility of manipulating transcription factors for the improved stress tolerance has been demonstrated by others recently (Jaglo-Ottosen et al., 1998; Kasuga et al., 1999).